To be fed up with an education system that ignores bright but quiet kids.

Incidentally I had a pretty crap childhood with some major issues I never discussed, alongside what now would be recognised as ADHD/ASD. Today's child will be assisted as it is the symptoms are now recognised. As a youngster I was just viewed as the disruptive kid.

Well done for that. And you managed to find a way around your difficulty to do well. However, how common was that within your peer group with similar home lifes?

The point of a test isn't to make the playing field even though, if you really want to do that might as well give everyone an automatic B Grade.
The point is to see how many questions a person can answer correctly in a certain time period. When I did my GCSEs in 2016 I remember what seemed like a quarter or maybe even a third of my year group were given extra time, it just defeats the purpose.

Technically a low iq is a learning disability so shall we start iq testing everyone and give anyone who scores under 80 extra time? Or how about under 100? Just where does this end? Exams are becoming pretty much pointless now.

@ARealitycheck This is what I hate. The assumption that a child who is quiet and doing okay has a loving and supportive home life with no challenges.
I went to the library to do homework as we were really poor and home was cold. I had free school meals, but back then there was no pupil premium or anything extra for pupils like me.

Your school was obviously very different to mine then - I was in primary school 40 years ago and people got house points even then for “trying hard” in their spelling test while I never did despite getting 20/20 each week because “it’s no effort for you”.

Which to be fair was true, but I just learned that I didn’t need to put any effort in and could coast, which wasn’t amazing when I hit the point where I actually did need to revise for exams/apply myself to understand something (university was a massive shock!)

If they are doing OK are they struggling? A child who has a nice quiet room at home can do homework and home study to get ahead. Another child sharing a room with two siblings and a busy house would struggle to do the same. I'd argue their endeavour involved harder work.

in their words, "I get 100% on my practice SATS papers every time and get nothing, but the kids who go from 50% to 60% get all the rewards."

You need to teach the child that they got 100%. That’s way better than getting 60% plus some vague school specific kudos. Teach the child to work for their own personal satisfaction not anyone else’s. That’s the lesson here.

But quiet kids who do okay even in things they struggle with, do not get praise or encouragement. They get ignored.

YANBU but...one thing I have learned in the decades since school is that being quietly excellent doesn't get you far.

^

This. So true at work.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease

My DD is in secondary and is always working hard and going the extra mile. It used to drive me mad when I would see other (more disruptive) children getting awards and recognition and little prizes when DD was getting nothing.

But at her parent teacher meeting, all of her teachers were effusive in their praise for her, telling me how helpful she is, a pleasure to teach, brightens up their day etc and I realised that while these other children might be getting these prizes, DD was building great relationships with her teachers and learning so much from that. I was focused on the visible rewards but she was in fact getting so much more behind the scenes. She had one little issue in school and the teachers fell over themselves to help her. It was lovely :)

Ah. And here is where it gets really insidious and long-term dangerous. Not giving out meaningless brownie points to high achievers is one thing. But leaving them entirely unchallenged and twiddling their thumbs is another - that's just not good enough. It's also how you ruin children's school experience. There's so many cases of kids acting up and opting out as a result of school bore-out but I suppose in your case there's also the additional burden of being a girl and all the be kind shite. You really do need to speak up about this, but also, you should encourage your daughter to speak up - it'll serve her well in life.

What kind of setting ?
Keeping in mind that children working a year behind their peers are unlikely to qualify for an EHCP ,as best they might be on the schools own SEN register and get extra help with reading and writing
They certainly wouldn't be going to a specialist school just because they are a bit behind with their reading.

@Bushmillsbabe I appreciate your advice. Thank you. He is going to a couple of things including Beavers and I'm always looking for something else locally that might fit him better.

It is highly unlikely your child will be good at everything as they go through education. They may as an example struggle with history or geography, in which case getting praise for working harder to do better than expected would likely encourage them.

Maybe look for other places he can be seen - clubs,sports etc.
My daughters confidence improved no end from doing Rainbows and Brownies, and she now makes herself "known' in class.

And I think this is the point that is often missed. All children are equally deserving of the teachers time and effort, but the focus always seems to be on the ones who, for whatever reason, are achieving lower than their peers. This may be due to SEN, to their or their parents attitudes, they may be less able or just can't be bothered.
People can be very quick to jump to SEN as the first reason though. My daughters teacher decided she must have ADHD, as she was often found up out of her chair, not sitting still on the carpet. Her teacher suggested I get her a wobble cushion, which we did. Didn't help at all. The issue was that the work was far to easy for her, she finished it quickly and then got bored, she tried to help her friends and got told off for talking. So then she learnt the strategy of asking to go to the toilet, and then went and read in the library for a few minutes before returning to class to others having finished and ready to move on. Her teacher then told me I should take her to GP for a suspected UTI as going to the toilet so often. Again, failing to see the real issue.
I don't really blame her teacher, it's hard to meet needs of 25 children and she was trying to be helpful. But she missed seeing what my child needed, which was to have her learning needs met, and instead found 'something wrong' with her.

I was exactly the same in primary school, they often found me in a higher year group because I found my class very boring, safeguarding was much lower than nowadays and I could easily wander around the school for an hour before my teacher realised I was gone, I think I once went off site to a park for a bit!
Them I got a scholarship to a private selective school at 11, and my learning experience completely changed.
We are lucky that we live in a grammer school area, as we would struggle to afford private.

You're not wrong OP

Just tell your kids that these awards are an incentive for the less able.

Sounds like a rubbish school which has poor reward systems and doesn't stretch pupils. It's not the case that all schools are that same.

Can she move school?

@Lifeglowup I do not think 40% of children could legitimately have SEN. SEN is supposed to be special needs, not ordinary normal needs, and yet apparently we are not far away from half of pupils in private schools apparently having special needs.

I suspect no difference in the % of children with SEN but and increase in the % of children with diagnosis of SEN because private school parents are morely likely to have the money to pay for private assessments.

I do not believe there is such an enormous disparity in SEN amongst pupils between the public and private sector. 40% of private school pupils! I mean come on.

They wouldn’t get extra time for fun, they would have been identified as having a level of SEN so they get more time to try and make the playing field more even.

I’m shocked I need to spell that out. Your son is 6 you say, well let’s hope he doesn’t need any interventions at some point as it’s not obvious until secondary school for some kids! You wouldn’t want him getting extra support now would you….

To add my DD’s best friend got extra time in her exams and she doesn’t have an official diagnosis of anything, but when they tested her at school (which they do in most secondary schools in year 7) things became apparent. So don’t count your chickens just yet as you can’t possibly know what support your child may need in the future.

Encourage her to make some noise. Get her to talk to the teacher quietly. It's tricky though because it might come off as showing off, especially in front of the other kids, so it depends on how she does it.

Anyhow, it's a lesson in real life.

I used to be one such kid. Learning about touting your own horn would have been a useful lesson, had I learnt it earlier! Unfortunately, I think too many people do tout their own horns, without basis.

I've got a quiet child. He's very good with some things but can definitely have support with other things. But he is so overlooked because there's always someone louder/ needing more support. No body seems concerned with my child's actual potential, trying to push him, help him speak confidently, recognise him for his good character.

Had a parents evening recently and, at year 3, it was the first time a teacher said 'he's a pleasure to teach!'. I nearly cried. Teacher may not have even meant it, may be she says it to every parent... But all I normally get is 'he is quiet'. And very few certificates etc. compared to classmates.

He spends an awful long time somewhere he's not really 'seen' and it makes me sad.